Board of Directors
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
Attention: Roy Bostock, Chairman
Attention: Jerry Yang, Chief Executive Officer
Dear Members of the Board:
I am writing on behalf of the Board of Directors of Microsoft to make a proposal for a business combination of Microsoft and Yahoo!. Under our proposal, Microsoft would acquire all of the outstanding shares of Yahoo! common stock for per share consideration of $31 based on Microsoft's closing share price on January 31, 2008, payable in the form of $31 in cash or 0.9509 of a share of Microsoft common stock. Microsoft would provide each Yahoo! shareholder with the ability to choose whether to receive the consideration in cash or Microsoft common stock, subject to pro-ration so that in the aggregate one-half of the Yahoo! common shares will be exchanged for shares of Microsoft common stock and one-half of the Yahoo! common shares will be converted into the right to receive cash. Our proposal is not subject to any financing condition.
Our proposal represents a 62% premium above the closing price of Yahoo! common stock of $19.18 on January 31, 2008. The implied premium for the operating assets of the company clearly is considerably greater when adjusted for the minority, non-controlled assets and cash. By whatever financial measure you use - EBITDA, free cash flow, operating cash flow, net income, or analyst target prices - this proposal represents a compelling value realization event for your shareholders.
We believe that Microsoft common stock represents a very attractive investment opportunity for Yahoo!'s shareholders. Microsoft has generated revenue growth of 15%, earnings growth of 26%, and a return on equity of 35% on average for the last three years. Microsoft's share price has generated shareholder returns of 8% during the last one year period and 28% during the last three year period, significantly outperforming the S&P 500. It is our view that Microsoft has significant potential upside given the continued solid growth in our core businesses, the recent launch of Windows Vista, and other strategic initiatives.
Microsoft's consistent belief has been that the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! clearly represents the best way to deliver maximum value to our respective shareholders, as well as create a more efficient and competitive company that would provide greater value and service to our customers. In late 2006 and early 2007, we jointly explored a broad range of ways in which our two companies might work together. These discussions were based on a vision that the online businesses of Microsoft and Yahoo! should be aligned in some way to create a more effective competitor in the online marketplace. We discussed a number of alternatives ranging from commercial partnerships to a merger proposal, which you rejected. While a commercial partnership may have made sense at one time, Microsoft believes that the only alternative now is the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! that we are proposing.
In February 2007, I received a letter from your Chairman indicating the view of the Yahoo! Board that "now is not the right time from the perspective of our shareholders to enter into discus
It still seem a weird thing to do, but actually, the difference between the price of a mac and the price of a medium level PC is a great gap, so in this sense I can see a point.
But the whole idea is still weird.
What you need to realize is that the underlying theory (entangled particles) permits the information to travel acress time, non the matter. In fact it permits the information a a particular particle "state" to trave trhough time. That's quite different from making phisical matter to decompose and appear in the future or in the past.
Microsoft Research is developing technology for finding rootkits by using their own deceptive behavior against them. Known as GhostBuster, it relies on analyzing and comparing system information at both a high level--from a Win32 API, for example--and a low level--such as the raw disk information. Any difference in the two views--for example, the low-level view indicating a file not present in the high-level view--makes a compelling case that a rootkit is trying to hide.
Simply not true!
I mean, since it is the Exact description of how RootkitRevealer works, I suppose (I'm sure) that it is the same product. For those who do not know,Microsoft acquired sysinternals (maker of RootkitRevealer) a few months ago.
From the italcementi site. TX Active® is a photocatalytic principle for cement products which can reduce organic and inorganic pollutants that are present in the air. Its effectiveness has been thoroughly tested and thus certified by important independent research centers (CNR, ARPA, IspraResearchCenter). Its formulation is the result of 10 years of research, tests and applications carried out by CTG (Centro Tecnico di Gruppo, a company in the Italcementi Group) which has led to the final formulation of the active principle.
While the parent is absolutely correct, the comment doesn't account for the fact that the EU and the Italian legislators push anything that goes toward limiting pollution with a great effort. That is, maybe the builders may receive a sort of compensation for using this kind of material, as the house owners who build photovoltaic panels are receiving since a couple of years ago.
Seems we are missing a few points, that need to be added to the equation. And both are bound to the SPEED.
Article notes a speed of 5-6 knots, that can be quite common for small and old sailing vessels. Modern sailing ships tipically double that speed (AlfaRomeo, a fast sloop - ie. single mast - can reach 14kts) with the use of modern construction techniques and rigging, as "water ballast" or "canting keel" (moving the "bulb" upwind enables the use of a bigger sail, substantially).
More on, multihulls (catamarans or trimarans) can easily reach 35/40 kts, due to their design.
At 6kts, doing 6000 Nautical Miles takes....1000 hours!
No, you are not so OT, since the use of AJAX on the client side, with a backend made of a bunch of robust J2EE web services is actually driving the new "web architecture" paradigm. This, of course, applies since PHP (and also many other "scripting languages") is actually not "three" or "n-tier-oriented".
According to this article the company has been able to silently (and with no-opt-out policy) upgrade the TiVo to include the red flag stuff(some shows can be delete or not retained more than 7 days...you know..)
Very..."unconfortable"...
From boing boing:
Earlier this month, TiVo owners discovered that a mandatory, non-optional "update" to their TiVos changed the built-in software so that broadcasters could flag certain shows for automatic deletion and for restriction from use with TiVoToGo.
David Zatz, a TiVo owner, decided to cancel his TiVo service. After all, he'd bought a device that could record all shows, not one that could record all shows save those that some paranoid Hollywood exec, overzealous broadcaster, or fumble-fingered technician gave him permission to record. TiVo had broken his device and he didn't want to keep using it.
But when he looked up canceling his TiVo, he found out that under the terms of his "agreement" with TiVo (e.g., the crap he clicked through when get got set up), he was obliged to pay a $150 "early cancellation" fee.
It should not surprise anyone.
Has someone tried a search for blog personal diary?
IMHO this is strictly related both to the age shift in the Internet audience AND to the competence shift, meaning that the percentage of technical gurus who once loved to contribute to the global knoledge has dropped down, leaving room for personal contributors.
Yes,it's called Antitrust. Named law is meant to avoid the creation of such a giant entity that could potentially, based on it's "dominant position", alter the market.
Hi Darth. I'm talking about DTT here in italy, that is available to a normal TV through a Set Top Box (a little more than a tuner), and has an optional return channel via modem and telephone line, but this is another part of the story.
I'm wondering if there is a way for a broadcaster to send some sort of metainformation to the "player".
Mmmm... Digital Terrestrial Television will follow DAB in a few months. According to recent laws all trasmission will be digital before the end of 2006. I wonder if this will mean that some show or film won't be "recordable".
Ok, even if a bit "troll", I see your point. I'll try to better explain mine: I'm currently testing 2.5.74. Upgrading from 2.4 to 2.5 was not so hard, even if it was really harder than in the past (2.2->2.3 etc.) due to the heavy changes to the module subsystem. Since the 2.6 series has been "marked" as a sort of milestone, I would like to have it as an "installation option", not an option, which, as you note, is already.
Since the promising 2.6 is alredy in a test phase, I would wait a couple of week to avoid the infamous module-related issues to upgrade a 2.4 kernel.
Is it possible to have 2.6.x (or even 2.5.75) as an option for the installation? Of course I woluld like it.
I personally can't wait to skim the change logs.
I think someone has already done this for you;-)
Check that link for a complete and detailed list of "things to expect" in the next stable version, already merged in th 2.5 series.
The guys who are developing the great Armagetron are dealing with this, as you can see in their Network Subsystem Documentation. The main issue covered seems to be the need to "level" the different users (in terms of their "ping times"), expecially when one of them is hosting the multiplayer game.
"We have done some pretty vivid demonstrations of putting half a pint of water in a decompression chamber and decompressing it to 100,000ft and the water boils and explodes in less than half a second, just disappears. It's scary stuff," And this is just scary??
I really hope their pressured suite are going to keep them safe from this....or we will see a really bad picture at their return.... Is anyone beside me asking himself if this adventure is just worth the risk?
I mean that the "market momentum" that is evaporating (as insightfully reported by a user below) is already becoming "industry momentum", as in the best plans on the Redmond giant.
I remember a few days ago a post on/. reporting something like Evangelism is War Here's a link to a copy of what has been compared to a MS internal memo about.Net Evangelism.
Ok, in that way I can see your point, and I completely agree with it. My point is that the "key source" is just a part of a project goal. Depending on the market you are dealing with you will try to adapt something of your coding habits (eventually based on analysts directions).
Slashdot Mirror
With an astonishing 62% premium price of its current stock price, Microsoft sent this proposal to the Yahoo! Board of Directors. Here's the . Actually, part of the premium price is explainable by the recent sunk of Yahoo! stock.
January 31, 2008
Board of Directors
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
Attention: Roy Bostock, Chairman
Attention: Jerry Yang, Chief Executive Officer
Dear Members of the Board:
I am writing on behalf of the Board of Directors of Microsoft to make a proposal for a business combination of Microsoft and Yahoo!. Under our proposal, Microsoft would acquire all of the outstanding shares of Yahoo! common stock for per share consideration of $31 based on Microsoft's closing share price on January 31, 2008, payable in the form of $31 in cash or 0.9509 of a share of Microsoft common stock. Microsoft would provide each Yahoo! shareholder with the ability to choose whether to receive the consideration in cash or Microsoft common stock, subject to pro-ration so that in the aggregate one-half of the Yahoo! common shares will be exchanged for shares of Microsoft common stock and one-half of the Yahoo! common shares will be converted into the right to receive cash. Our proposal is not subject to any financing condition.
Our proposal represents a 62% premium above the closing price of Yahoo! common stock of $19.18 on January 31, 2008. The implied premium for the operating assets of the company clearly is considerably greater when adjusted for the minority, non-controlled assets and cash. By whatever financial measure you use - EBITDA, free cash flow, operating cash flow, net income, or analyst target prices - this proposal represents a compelling value realization event for your shareholders.
We believe that Microsoft common stock represents a very attractive investment opportunity for Yahoo!'s shareholders. Microsoft has generated revenue growth of 15%, earnings growth of 26%, and a return on equity of 35% on average for the last three years. Microsoft's share price has generated shareholder returns of 8% during the last one year period and 28% during the last three year period, significantly outperforming the S&P 500. It is our view that Microsoft has significant potential upside given the continued solid growth in our core businesses, the recent launch of Windows Vista, and other strategic initiatives.
Microsoft's consistent belief has been that the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! clearly represents the best way to deliver maximum value to our respective shareholders, as well as create a more efficient and competitive company that would provide greater value and service to our customers. In late 2006 and early 2007, we jointly explored a broad range of ways in which our two companies might work together. These discussions were based on a vision that the online businesses of Microsoft and Yahoo! should be aligned in some way to create a more effective competitor in the online marketplace. We discussed a number of alternatives ranging from commercial partnerships to a merger proposal, which you rejected. While a commercial partnership may have made sense at one time, Microsoft believes that the only alternative now is the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! that we are proposing.
In February 2007, I received a letter from your Chairman indicating the view of the Yahoo! Board that "now is not the right time from the perspective of our shareholders to enter into discus
It still seem a weird thing to do, but actually, the difference between the price of a mac and the price of a medium level PC is a great gap, so in this sense I can see a point. But the whole idea is still weird.
What you need to realize is that the underlying theory (entangled particles) permits the information to travel acress time, non the matter. In fact it permits the information a a particular particle "state" to trave trhough time. That's quite different from making phisical matter to decompose and appear in the future or in the past.
Does it relate to the fact that the number of NASA's Earth-observing missions will drop dramatically, as reported yesterday on Slashdot?
Microsoft Research is developing technology for finding rootkits by using their own deceptive behavior against them. Known as GhostBuster, it relies on analyzing and comparing system information at both a high level--from a Win32 API, for example--and a low level--such as the raw disk information. Any difference in the two views--for example, the low-level view indicating a file not present in the high-level view--makes a compelling case that a rootkit is trying to hide.
Simply not true!
I mean, since it is the Exact description of how RootkitRevealer works, I suppose (I'm sure) that it is the same product. For those who do not know,Microsoft acquired sysinternals (maker of RootkitRevealer) a few months ago.
From the italcementi site.
TX Active® is a photocatalytic principle for cement products which can reduce organic and inorganic pollutants that are present in the air. Its effectiveness has been thoroughly tested and thus certified by important independent research centers (CNR, ARPA, IspraResearchCenter). Its formulation is the result of 10 years of research, tests and applications carried out by CTG (Centro Tecnico di Gruppo, a company in the Italcementi Group) which has led to the final formulation of the active principle.
While the parent is absolutely correct, the comment doesn't account for the fact that the EU and the Italian legislators push anything that goes toward limiting pollution with a great effort. That is, maybe the builders may receive a sort of compensation for using this kind of material, as the house owners who build photovoltaic panels are receiving since a couple of years ago.
Seems we are missing a few points, that need to be added to the equation. And both are bound to the SPEED. Article notes a speed of 5-6 knots, that can be quite common for small and old sailing vessels.
Modern sailing ships tipically double that speed (AlfaRomeo, a fast sloop - ie. single mast - can reach 14kts) with the use of modern construction techniques and rigging, as "water ballast" or "canting keel" (moving the "bulb" upwind enables the use of a bigger sail, substantially). More on, multihulls (catamarans or trimarans) can easily reach 35/40 kts, due to their design. At 6kts, doing 6000 Nautical Miles takes....1000 hours!
WMP requires admin privs to install codec, in some cases. I think this could explain the descripted behavior.
No, you are not so OT, since the use of AJAX on the client side, with a backend made of a bunch of robust J2EE web services is actually driving the new "web architecture" paradigm.
This, of course, applies since PHP (and also many other "scripting languages") is actually not "three" or "n-tier-oriented".
According to this article the company has been able to silently (and with no-opt-out policy) upgrade the TiVo to include the red flag stuff(some shows can be delete or not retained more than 7 days...you know..)
Very..."unconfortable"...
From boing boing:
Earlier this month, TiVo owners discovered that a mandatory, non-optional "update" to their TiVos changed the built-in software so that broadcasters could flag certain shows for automatic deletion and for restriction from use with TiVoToGo. David Zatz, a TiVo owner, decided to cancel his TiVo service. After all, he'd bought a device that could record all shows, not one that could record all shows save those that some paranoid Hollywood exec, overzealous broadcaster, or fumble-fingered technician gave him permission to record. TiVo had broken his device and he didn't want to keep using it. But when he looked up canceling his TiVo, he found out that under the terms of his "agreement" with TiVo (e.g., the crap he clicked through when get got set up), he was obliged to pay a $150 "early cancellation" fee.
It should not surprise anyone.
Has someone tried a search for blog personal diary?
IMHO this is strictly related both to the age shift in the Internet audience AND to the competence shift, meaning that the percentage of technical gurus who once loved to contribute to the global knoledge has dropped down, leaving room for personal contributors.
Yes,it's called Antitrust. Named law is meant to avoid the creation of such a giant entity that could potentially, based on it's "dominant position", alter the market.
Hi Darth. I'm talking about DTT here in italy, that is available to a normal TV through a Set Top Box (a little more than a tuner), and has an optional return channel via modem and telephone line, but this is another part of the story.
I'm wondering if there is a way for a broadcaster to send some sort of metainformation to the "player".
Mmmm... Digital Terrestrial Television will follow DAB in a few months. According to recent laws all trasmission will be digital before the end of 2006. I wonder if this will mean that some show or film won't be "recordable".
...And no, microwaving will generally not destroy the tags, and no, most items won't be microwaveable anyway. Try to microwave your couch. ..
What about trying to Slashdot'em???
Ok, even if a bit "troll", I see your point.
I'll try to better explain mine:
I'm currently testing 2.5.74. Upgrading from 2.4 to 2.5 was not so hard, even if it was really harder than in the past (2.2->2.3 etc.) due to the heavy changes to the module subsystem.
Since the 2.6 series has been "marked" as a sort of milestone, I would like to have it as an "installation option", not an option, which, as you note, is already.
Since the promising 2.6 is alredy in a test phase, I would wait a couple of week to avoid the infamous module-related issues to upgrade a 2.4 kernel.
Is it possible to have 2.6.x (or even 2.5.75) as an option for the installation? Of course I woluld like it.
I personally can't wait to skim the change logs. ;-)
I think someone has already done this for you
Check that link for a complete and detailed list of "things to expect" in the next stable version, already merged in th 2.5 series.
The guys who are developing the great Armagetron are dealing with this, as you can see in their Network Subsystem Documentation.
The main issue covered seems to be the need to "level" the different users (in terms of their "ping times"), expecially when one of them is hosting the multiplayer game.
"We have done some pretty vivid demonstrations of putting half a pint of water in a decompression chamber and decompressing it to 100,000ft and the water boils and explodes in less than half a second, just disappears. It's scary stuff,"
And this is just scary??
I really hope their pressured suite are going to keep them safe from this....or we will see a really bad picture at their return....
Is anyone beside me asking himself if this adventure is just worth the risk?
On the 7th of August there will we a Webcast on "Mars Exploration".
I mean that the "market momentum" that is evaporating (as insightfully reported by a user below) is already becoming "industry momentum", as in the best plans on the Redmond giant. /. reporting something like Evangelism is War .Net Evangelism.
I remember a few days ago a post on
Here's a link to a copy of what has been compared to a MS internal memo about
Ok, in that way I can see your point, and I completely agree with it.
My point is that the "key source" is just a part of a project goal. Depending on the market you are dealing with you will try to adapt something of your coding habits (eventually based on analysts directions).
Buggytechture? Isn't it a software firm from Redmond?